Rohingya and Muslims in Arakan State : Slow-Burning Genocide

Rohingya and Muslims in Arakan State : Slow-Burning Genocide

ALTSEAN -­ Burma – 15 August 2006

• The experiences of more than 1 million Rohingya and Muslims from Burma areoften overlooked in global media coverage, whether in Burma or in exile in Bangladesh, Malaysia and elsewhere
• Rohingya are denied citizenship at home and protection in countries of asylum: many have been forced to leave and denied resettlement, others forcibly deported to situations of danger.
• Rohingya in exile present a humanitarian and political headache for neighbors – as many as 250,000 in Bangladesh and 25,000 in Malaysia.
• Those remaining in Burma face human rights abuses on a scale that is disparate when compared with those experienced by the rest of the population.
• In 1992 the UN General Assembly recognized the disproportionate suffering the community had experienced under the military regime in Resolution 47/144.
• Since 1992, the “torture and arbitrary execution, continued detention of a large number of persons for political reasons, the existence of important restrictions on the exercise of fundamental freedoms and the imposition of oppressive measures” that so concerned the UN have continued, forcing new movements of people, and waves of refugees that place a burden on the limited resources of Bangladesh and other neighbors.
• The campaign of displacement, denial of culture and identity, restrictions on the right to marry and form a family, killings, rape, torture and denial of food are a slow-burning genocide – “deliberately inflict[ing] on the group [Rohingya and Arakan Muslims] conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.

”In actual fact, although there are (135) national races living in Myanmar today, the so-called Rohingya people is not one of them. Historically, there has never been a ‘Rohingya’ race in Myanmar. The very name Rohingya is a creation of a group of insurgents in the Rakhine State. Since the First Anglo-Myanmar War in 1824, people of Muslim Faith from the adjacent country illegally entered Myanmar Ngain-Ngan, particularly Rakhine State. Being illegal immigrants they do not hold immigration papers like other nationals of the country.”—  Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Union of Myanmar

The origins of the Rohingya’s place in Burma is in dispute – some say that Rohingya have always lived in Northern Arakan State and converted to Islam in the 12th century; others say that Rohingyabegan migrating to Burma during the British Colonial era. The reality is probably a mix of the two –Muslim traders who settled on the coast over the centuries who, along with larger influx of Muslims from the Chittagong area of Bangladesh in later centuries, developing a unique language, cultural practices and a sense of common identity. Under the junta’s 1982 citizenship law, more than one million Rohingya have been denied citizenship by the SPDC in Burma, with the authorities classifying them as “Bengali Muslims”, effectively leaving them stateless. Some argue that the law, replacing the 1948 Act, was written with the specific intention of removing any Rohingya claim on citizenship that the previous law allowed.

Many Rohingya and Arakan Muslims have fled the oppression of the regime, in particular seeking refuge in Bangladesh and Malaysia. However, Rohingya and Arakan Muslim refugees from Burma have been denied refugee status in both countries (neither are signatories to the Refugee Convention). They have been classified as “illegal” economic migrants, and denial of their rights has continued. Throughout the 1990s the Bangladesh authorities repatriated 236,000 of the 250,000 that fled to Bangladesh between November 1991 to June 1992 back to Burma throughout the 1990s, and by 2002 there were only 20,000 remaining in camps.6 The UNHCR scheduled a program for absolute withdrawal from management of Rohingya and Arakan Muslim asylum seekers in Bangladesh – subsequent repatriations have been accompanied by accusations of coercion and violence aimed at Bangladesh authorities and the UNHCR, and occurred whilst Rohingya and Arakan Muslims continue to flee persecution in Burma back to Bangladesh.

However, many of those repatriated to Burma have returned to Bangladesh. New arrivals and returnees now number 200,000 living outside of camps, not permitted to access camps or to receive the protection of the UNHCR. Rohingya and Arakan Muslims, including children, are jailed in Bangladesh for violations of migration and employment law, and often remain in jail beyond the length of their sentences – some as long as 12 years – waiting the authorities negotiation of prisoner exchanges with the SPDC.

“The sweeping restrictions on the movement of Rohingyas are disproportionate and discriminatory; they are imposed on all Rohingyas because they are Rohingyas, and not on members of other ethnic nationalities in Rakhine State. They are broad and indiscriminate in their application” —  Amnesty International